Although he would modestly play down his input, it’s reasonable to say that had the wiry-haired Simon M Woods not failed his art degree then UB40 might never have become the world’s most successful white reggae band, the Midland Arts Centre might never have been in the position to undergo its current makeover and the Birmingham School of Acting would likely have disappeared.

Born in Watford and raised in Surrey, the 53-year-old father of three grown-up children now lives in Alvechurch with actress wife Den, but his long relationship with his adopted city began 35 years ago when his somewhat fraught foundation course at Hornsey College of Art ground to a halt.

“I was standing at my end of year show in Crouch End and this bloke from Birmingham School of Art walked in and said ‘This is good, have you ever been to Birmingham and do you want a place on the sculpture course?’ I said ‘yes’.”

Arriving to do a BA in fine art sculpture, Woods got involved with screen printing and did what art students normally do: “Come in in the afternoon, sit in the canteen and moan all day.” He failed the course. Not, however, because his work wasn’t up to scratch.

“It was 1976 and they asked me to produce the poster to be sent round the country publicising the painting and sculpture department’s end of year show.

“I finished it at the last possible moment, the staff took one look and promptly burned them. I thought they were fascist because the painting department didn’t like my work, so the poster featured a Nazi swastika. They felt it might bring them into disrepute. Luckily I’d made twice the number and made quite a bit selling the others.”

Having been “roughed up” by the visiting moderator (“he grabbed me by the collar and said I’d wasted everybody’s time”), Woods returned to London, working in clothes shops, living in Soho where his landlord introduced him to the likes of Lucien Freud, Francis Bacon and Jeffrey Bernard, and going “a little wild”.

It was a shared birthday party that brought him back to Birmingham. Held at the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath on February 9, 1979, it was also the first gig played by recently formed reggae outfit UB40.

Within a couple of months Woods had become their manager and was being told by everyone that an English white reggae band would never have a hit record in a million years.

He admits he hadn’t the faintest idea what he was doing, but knew he didn’t want to sign with the major labels. He secured a Peel session that led to an invitation to tour with the Pretenders.

He turned down – much to the band’s annoyance – two offers to release a single on 2 Tone (“I didn’t want them to be seen as a ska band”), eventually releasing debut single Food For Thought on Dudley label, Graduate, where Simon met wife Den.

Woods stayed with the band through a bitter High Court legal battle with Graduate, which sued them when they decided to go it alone and form their own Dep International label (“It was my idea to add the International, the band just wanted to call it Dep”) and the first three classic mega-selling albums.

He also says he and Den were behind many of what he refers to as the “UB40 myths”. In the end, paths and purposes diverged (“they firmly told me they were the talent and I was just there to do a job”) and he got bored.

“They refused to go on stage at the Montreaux Jazz Festival because they said the PA wasn’t good enough. I told them it had been good enough for Hendrix and Miles Davis. I didn’t think they loved being musicians enough. UB40 wanted to be famous, and that didn’t interest me.”

After parting ways with UB40 in 1983, Woods set up a new label, Exit, and signed Birmingham jazz-soul trio Swans Way.

Again no label would touch them, until, they landed a spot on The Tube, performing Soul Train live at a Handsworth strip club.

“It became the most requested footage on the show and suddenly everybody had loved them all along,” says Simon.

Signed to Mercury, with demand outstripping the initial pressing, Soul Train seemed set to go through the roof. However, the label was caught rigging the sales of one of its major acts and Swans Way were offered up as the sacrificial lamb.

The band called it a day, Exit collapsed and Woods became disillusioned with the whole music business scene.

After a couple of years’ occasional lecturing, 1989 saw the opportunity to become marketing manager at the Mac, where UB40 had once played an outdoor show that still holds the audience record.

“It had been a really underperforming organisation with a huge debt,” he recalls. “When I got there, the council had paid that off, but there was still no money.

“We used to judge our ability to pay salaries on how good the weather would be at the weekend and how much beer we’d sell.”

“My job was to give it a fighting chance. We came up with the slogan ‘mac – the centre for Birmingham’, which was about giving the place a sense of identity and location. When I left we’d increased the number of people going, put up the prices and cut the cost of marketing.”

After leaving Mac in 1992, he spent three years running Wham, his own arts marketing and publishing outfit that led to an offer from Patsy Yardley, who ran the then Birmingham School of Speech and Dramatic Arts, now Birmingham School of Acting.

“They were having a hell of a time because funding for drama schools had just been stopped. I told Patsy I had no idea what we were going to do and she just looked at me and said ‘you’re a very clever man, I’m sure you’ll find the solution’. And we did.”

Other than saving the place from bankruptcy, perhaps Woods’ most notable contribution was to bring focus to bear on screen acting as well as stage, and, in tandem with Natasha Carlish of Dreamfinder Productions, set up short films programme Brummiewood; so named because it emulated the Hollywood studio system of the 30s by churning out several films a week.

“At the time the thinking was you could teach people film training through theatre. To a degree that’s true, but why not give them the real experience?

“ I remember being at the National Council For Drama Training with the other heads of drama schools, who hated me because I wasn’t an actor and knew nothing technically. One of them said that Britain produces the best screen actors in the world. I said ‘Only if you haven’t seen the Sopranos.’”

Prompted by a suggestion from Justin Edgar (in whose short film, Large, Den had acted), Woods set about restructuring, looking to create a more modern European style of acting and founding Brummiewood.

“RADA isn’t the best actor training in the world, it’s the just most famous,” he says, provocatively. “Casting agents turn up to the showcases because they know there’ll be people in the audience with whom they can network.

“Brummiewood was created to provide real experience of film making and come out with a product that might have legs beyond just an exercise. It was also about building relationships with a group of writers and directors who would, hopefully, go on to be successes and have a good word to say about the school, come back and talk or audition an actor because they’d were one of our graduates.”

Between 2004-2006, Woods produced 26 shorts for the initiative, working with names like Edgar, Geoff Thompson (Brown Paper Bag), Michael Clifford and Sarah Walker, whose Soul Boy was selected for the prestigious LA Short Film Festival, received three Broadcast nominations and won an RTS award.

Woods was also doing voluntary work as a director of both the Drum and Aston Performing Arts Academy, an unfunded organisation (“brilliant and humbling”) set up by local parents.

He also spent three years taking a Masters of Public Administration degree. In the end though, after 10 years, six spent as chief executive, he decided it was time to move on.

“I’d done my job. We’d got funding, raised the international profile of the school and the aspirations of its students, merged with Birmingham City University and moved to a new state of the art building in Millennium Point.”

For his swan song, Woods decided to mount an extravaganza for the inaugural New Generation Arts Festival. It would be From Ithaca With Love, a modern comedy production of Homer’s Odyssey in the Millennium Point atrium.

“When Greece won the European Cup the commentator said ‘we’ve come home, we’ve found Ithaca’, and I felt that Millennium Point was like finding our Ithaca. Little did we know what hard work it would be.”

Woods’ latest project, with backing from private investors, is European Drama Network, which is dedicated to filming classic plays, making them accessible to a modern audience, and allowing them to be downloaded to Home Cinema. Their first release, written and directed by Italian stage director Malachi Bogdanov and filmed entirely on location in Sardinia, will be The Mandrake Root, a witty adaptation of a 1512 comedy by Nicola Machiavelli.

“It’s really funny and very contemporary,” he enthuses. “It won’t rival Indiana Jones, but it will appeal to a particular audience. The internet allows you to bring that niche material to a global market.

“There are, ultimately, only three marketing strategies; 1) get more customers; 2) get them to pay more for the same thing; and 3) get them to buy more often. Concentrating on making films with an European aesthetic, which is something America likes, we’re looking to make six to nine films a year, which they can download, stream or buy on dvd, creating a brand where people will know what they’re getting.”

With plans already in hand to film From Ithaca With Love and a comedy version of “that well known rib-tickler” Dante’s Inferno, Woods is relishing facing another challenge with all the accompanying pressures.

Ask him what he thinks he’s achieved and he gets a little embarrassed, talks about family and marriage being more important to who and what you are, but playing down the accomplishments.

“I’m not sure I’ve achieved anything, really,” he insists. “I just like being there and taking part. I enjoy it when you’re in the moment of making things happen. It may be just blind stupidity, but I have the determination and ability to carry things through when everyone’s telling you it’s impossible or there’s no market. I thrive on a bit of stress.”

Wonder if he ever thinks of just putting his feet up and he smiles.

“Probably not. I’d like to think it got a little easier, but I take heart from the fact that Clint Eastwood is 78 and his designer calls him the youngster!”

* The Mandrake Root has its world premiere at an outdoor screening at Curzon Street car park on Saturday, June 21. For more information on the European Drama Network and how to obtain its films, visit www.europeandramanetwork.com.